Culture

What are Blue Ocean churches like?

Blue Ocean Faith has become, for people and churches that are enthused about it, a fresh experience of faith in a living, communicative, active God, and an experience that seems to work especially well for people who feel at home in secular settings.

Blue Ocean churches commonly aspire to be:

ALIVE IN GOD

We’re all in on this.

In the secular cities that these churches so often thrive in, we’ve found that even nonchurchgoing people are not looking for less focus on God, but more. They want lively worship and faith and prayer and miracles. In our experience, they’re supernaturalists rather than being skeptical secularists. We’re excited about this.

Diverse

We like to learn.

Once they leave home, most people live in a diverse world. Colleges are almost all quite ethnically diverse, as are most large workforces. Blue Ocean Churches do our best to be as diverse as we can.

Inclusive

We follow God together.

A core idea in Blue Ocean is that it’s in all of our interests to follow Jesus as best as we can, and to help each other as we go. We’re eager to apply that to all people. The rapid, wholehearted inclusion of LGBTQ people as full partners in America is mirrored in Blue Ocean churches.

Politically Nuanced

We bless our world together.

While our congregants often have their own, often strong political opinions, they recognize that politics increasingly involves demonizing opponents rather than earnestly working together to create a just and thriving society. Blue Ocean churches do our best not to participate in that demonization even as we work to bless our great surrounding cities.

Attractive and Comprehensible

We Avoid Being Insider-Y.

Interestingly, we’ve found that our once-nonchurchgoing friends seem to want a church where they could invite other nonchurchgoing friends. It’s only human to lapse into insider jargon, so Blue Ocean churches take special care to speak clearly to common, human concerns, even as we commit to being as deep and powerful as we can be.